We do wake up literally at
the crack of dawn- 5:00am. The sky
is just beginning to get light. We have made all our preparations for a quick
get away. The only slight delay is
finding one of the marina staff to take our lock fob and get our 10 Euro
deposit back. But we manage that
at the fuel pontoon and we are on our way. The weather forecast is good, we check again before we
leave. The only problem is that
there is likely to be little or no wind.
So it will be a long motor trip. We slip mooring at about 5:30 and get out of the marina
before 6. We put up the mainsail
just in case some wind shows up and put up the revs on the engine when disaster
hits. As we start to accelerate
there is a loud screeching noise from the engine! It is overheating.
We quickly turn the engine off and R goes below to see if there is
something stuck in the filter to stop the water circulating and cooling the
engine. He can’t see anything
obviously wrong. We put the engine
on again momentarily and it is still sounding the alarm, but there is water
coming out of the exhaust (as there should be). We can’t risk using the engine. So we have no choice, we have to turn around and return to
the marina. There is only less
than 3 knots of wind (even going to zero at one stage) but we will have to sail
back. It is only about half a mile, but even with all the sails up it takes us
over half an hour to get to the harbour entrance. Richard does a grand job of taking the boat in under sail
despite having what little wind there is nearly on the nose and pushing us
towards the breakwater. I call up
the marina and warn them that we have no engine and will need help to come
in. They say to stand by, but
nothing happens. As we get further
into the harbour and approach the control tower they finally send a rib which
helps us to tie up to the fuel pontoon.
By the time we tie up it is still only 7am, so it will take some time to
try and call an engineer to see what is the matter.
So with nothing to do, I go
back to bed for an hour and Richard reads the downloaded newspaper. At about 9am they tell us that they
can’t get an engineer to us until 2:30 this afternoon. So we just have to sit around and wait. As we are not on a proper berth,
Richard is unhappy to leave the boat at all.
We hope that there is just
some blockage in the water cooling system that can be cleared by the
mechanic. If so we might try to
make the passage overnight tonight and make up for some lost time. To this end I make a big lunch so that
if necessary we can eat just sandwiches for supper under way.
As we start our lunch Ren
and Angela on Tantrum of Hamble come in.
We tell them the sad story.
Finally only 10 minutes
late, the mechanic turns up. He
finds the fault without too much trouble.
It is a broken hose. That
is fairly easily fixed, BUT, they do not have the part and it can take up to
three days to get it! I am really
fed up now. They are going to try
their local stockist. If he has a
hose, then they can fix it tomorrow afternoon. But if not we are stuck here for at least another three
days! We keep our fingers crossed.
In the meantime we are just
wasting another day. Finally at
4:30pm the marina men come with a couple of ribs and tow us back to our proper
berth. At least this is more
comfortable and we have electricity.
If there is not going to be a repair tomorrow, we shall hire a car for a
few days and travel about. We will
keep you informed.
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